Page 357 - The Life of Pie

Author Notes:

Let's have a round of internet applause for everyone who contributed to this round of guest comics. I've had a lovely couple of months' break from the comic, and now I'm ready for more.

Like Dragonshy, there are updated character sheets in play because of the level up, but I probably won't get around to updating the Cast page until sometime next week. I'll point it out in an Author's Note when it happens.

Mr. Munroe is exceptionally intelligent and s terrifically creative person. I'm not the biggest Monty Python fan on the planet.*

That said, the wonderful thing here is not the joke. It's being in a place where it can be enjoyed as a shared experience. Sure, the case can be made that it simulates spontaneity in an uncreative fashion. The case can also be made that this is trivial when compared to the participation and enthusiasm. You see people parrotting dead scripts. I see that as the tip of the iceberg of recollection.

Let me elaborate on that. When I hear someone quote Tim the Enchanter, I roll my eyes. Then I think back to all of the people I heard quote him and all the places I heard it done. I recall his lined used as non sequitur to break an argument, as ice breaker in conversation between strangers finding common ground, and even as foreplay on one occasion. ("Say no more, say no more," is an entirely appropriate observation at this point.)

Maybe people could be doing something more creative in such moments. Or maybe some would do nothing at all without them. That would be a loss, because I've seen more than a few people spam these lines until they felt secure enough to try something original, worrying less about the possibility of falling on their face. If folks still come back to this Old Reliable in recreational or familiar moments, well, aren't those the best time to break out the building blocks you used as a kid?

* In fairness, some of that may be due to my perception that people often overlook later work done by the former members of that ensemble.

No one here yet. Let's see if I can't give five people time to respond first.

I wasn't expecting this story to start at another player's house, but that's perfect. It fills me with feelings of foreboding for the characters, though. Once again, I am very curious to see where this will go.

I always host the game at my place if I'm running. I simply never feel comfortable in the GM chair at some other place. After my daughter was born, my mobility was severely hampered so pretty much it had to be my place if the group wanted me to participate at all.

I usually host the games, since out of the five people involved, my house is the only one that:
-has at least one room large enough for a full table, five chairs, a side table for the DM and enough space to still walk around once everything is in,
-isn't an hour's drive away from everyone else's.
There's this one house that is way bigger and awesome, but it's the one where the guy who has to drive an hour to get here lives.

We always gamed in the ground floor of the pyscology and sociolgy building at uni. Which was hilarious since we all had some varity of learning disability (dyspraxia, hell yeah!) that impacted our ablity to socilise.

1. My awesome bro brought to this comic. I first started reading when NMM broke the ledge out from under them. I wasn't a regular until sometime during the second session, when I joined and got me an avatar.

Internet clapping is much like golf clapping in that you can't hear it at all, but here goes (listen closely):

CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!

-Did you hear it?

Well, whatever the case, that was my clapping for the round of guest comics. I enjoyed them on the whole, and it was a nice sidequest-like developement while the GM (I mean... Artist? Screenwriter? Stillwriter?) was away.

-And on the topic of Nightmare Night, have a safe and happy one everybody!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVmYcE83a2I

^In my opinion, this is still the best Nightmare Night PMV I've found so far.

For the record though, I love Halloween, as it gives a grown man reason to dress up in a crazy costume and teach college level English classes in it...

Shadowrun--
The team needed to break into the mansion of the BBEG in order to rescue a kidnapped child. Somehow the team thought up the brilliant idea of taking the foul-mouthed tomboyish country girl mage and dress her up into a pretty wallflower in lolita-style clothes to sneak into the mansion party as a servant.

Squick ensues when it turns out all the young girls here aren't servants, but this is a gathering of the city's WORST child molesters and sexual predators.

So where's the "fun" part? Well recall that our country girl is a Mage. Not even 15 minutes in the mansion and she goes Emperor Palpatine on these criminals-- she's hurling lightning bolts and summoning vicious fire elementals.

The rest of the team doesn't need to break in. They wait outside disguised as cops for the pedo creeps to come running out to them. Cue the beatings!!

We were so satisfied when it ended with the team saving every single child from that mansion. :D

Best part is, DMs tend to have their hands full with so many things, we actually might see the...
Wait, Deja Vu...
*Checks something*
Aww, we already used the punch-drinking scene!
http://friendshipisdragons.thecomicseries.com/comics/30/
Not sure what other scenes might be used from the party, then.

She's new at being a DM and can't seem to keep DM-knowledge separate from character knowledge. Twilight notices and tries to rectify it by pointing it out, and Pinkie defends herself with some sort of vague "Pinkie Sense" that Twilight immediately doubts to the point of derailing the campaign.
It ends after they all get lost in the Everfree and Twilight realizes she once again ruined the DM's campaign for no good reason. None of that would have happened if she had just accepted Pinkie's inexperience and moved on with the adventure.

FS: I roll Acrobatics to try and transport some of the frogs to the bog *roll*...oh, dear, a 3.
PP: Halfway across town, one of the frogs jumps out of the cart and is headed right for Twilight. Roll Athletics to dodge!
TS: ...Um, why would I dodge? To be perfectly honest, I don't think my character habitually looks up to see if frogs are about to fall on her.
PP: Um...oh, Pinkie tells you that something's going to fall on you.
TS: Was Pinkie looking at the sky?
PP: No, it was, uh, her Pinkie Sense!
TS: ...Her what now?
------------------------------
AJ: Twilight, what are you doing in a ditch?
TS: Well, apparently Pinkie Pie's tail tells the future. After I failed to dodge a falling frog, she had *me* fall into a ditch to "prove it worked".
AJ: ...Is that right?
TS: Don't worry, if she's going to pull this "Pinkie Sense" on us, I'm going to get her to define exactly what it can and can't do.
AJ: Twilight, trust me on this...let it go.
TS: What? But you have to know she's just going to use it to railroad us. "You all failed your Perception checks, but Pinkie knows which way to go all the time."
AJ: And you just "happened" to find a book telling you all about how Nightmare Moon was coming back the next day. Twi, DMs all have their methods of contrivances to try and move the plot along. Some are...less subtle than others, but I know that Pinkie's not going to try to abuse her new "power" all that much. She just...wants us all to have a good time.
TS: But I'm supposed to accept the "Pinkie Sense" as something other then DM ex machina, there are so many questions it raises. If she's going to keep using it, I'm going to force her to consistent about it.
AJ: *sigh* I can tell this won't end well.

I have the strange feeling that the Pinkie Sense IS Pinkie's planned campaign. She's going to introduce this new ability of hers, which most will accept because there's no way it can work unless she is DM, meaning only this campaign, and so runs with it. Then Twi wants to know how it works...not just in terms of rules physics but also world physics.

At the end it turns out Pinkie added it because her family is a long line of psychics...but 'the gift' skipped her, so she wanted Pinkie to have it so she could have a vicarious connection to her family that she normally lacks. And then...

TS: But Pinkie, how did you really know I'd accept your Pinkie Sense?
PP: Wishful thinking.
TS: But...but...what if I hadn't?
PP: Then the doozy would have been the Pinkie Sense leading me to the wrong path, meaning I couldn't rely on it anymore.
TS:...
Everyone else: ...
TS: ...I believe-
PP: In fairies?
Everyone else: *facehoof*

Story time?
Campaigns at a new house/area that had the players so distracted random elements of the real world kept screwing with the game. (Or really, any time RL distractions made a campaign better or worse.)